


a few arrangements

by thenewbacklog



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Epistolary, F/F, Gen, Mind Manipulation, Trauma, aftermath of it anyway, canon-typical suffering, elias is not in this fic but he's still (unfortunately) present, i have no clue how to explain what The Incident in ep106 is, this is less epistolary than it used to be but some of the later chapters will still be letters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:40:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22905622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenewbacklog/pseuds/thenewbacklog
Summary: Statement of Melanie King, regarding her attempts to leave her position at the Magnus Institute. (Or, five letters Melanie King never sent, and one she did.)
Relationships: Basira Hussain & Melanie King, Melanie King & Jonathan Sims
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	1. One: New Hire

**Author's Note:**

> Tags will be updated along with the fic, since I wanted them to reflect what was currently here. I've only written the first chapter and outlined some of the rest.
> 
> Update: I finally found a title I liked!

Jon,

I know you’re not technically my boss, but Elias never took you off the payroll, so I guess he still thinks you’re coming back. Martin said it wasn't like any of us could quit any time soon, and when I asked what he meant, he said he had to answer the phone and practically ran for the door.

I'm not sure you can even hear the phone from the break room.

Was he trying to haze me, or something? If I handed you a letter saying "I'm resigning from the Magnus Institute, effective two weeks from today," that would be it, right?

This place is even weirder than it looks. Really explains a lot about you.

Melanie

* * *

The email sat in Melanie's drafts folder, slowly pushed downward under the weight of links saved for later, half-finished emails, and other debris, until she'd forgotten about it completely.


	2. Two: After Elias

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was... a lot tougher than I was expecting. It's honestly hard to write Melanie having anything resembling a positive experience in s3, and we get so little of her and Basira's friendship (which is part of why I'm writing this - I love how much lighter they are with each other and wanted more). I tried to build it off what we knew of them by 106, and what we know of them later, but I might come back and edit this after I've given it more thought.
> 
> It was a tough balance to strike, honestly, and tougher since I'm writing in Melanie's POV. But I tried to get at the fact that they're still pretty new to each other, even though you'd get close fast if you're the only new people in that kind of a working environment. So they're still kind of tentative, and the pieces don't quite fit together the way they would by, say, the beginning of s4.

Melanie wasn’t sure how long she sat there, or where she was sitting. She’d stumbled out of Elias’ office, head down like that would hide the tears, not running so much as throwing herself toward a door she could lock (like that could keep Elias out). And she’d ended up… here. The crying had long since tapered off, and her face felt sticky, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She thought she could hear water dripping in a sink.

There was a pain in her shoulder – a hinge, maybe? It sounded like someone (Basira? Martin?) was nearby, talking, but muffled.

She opened her eyes.  
  
Oh. Bathroom door.  
  
Archives.  
  
Wait.  
  
Basira.  
  
Drinks.  
  
Fuck.  
  
She inched closer to the sink, winced as she stood and all her joints cracked at once, then splashed some cold water on her face, scrubbing at her eyes until they hurt. Without the smeared eyeliner she at least looked less like she’d been crying at work.  
  
What a joke. Crying at work didn’t begin to cover whatever the hell this was.  
  
The voices on the other side of the door stopped once Melanie started moving. When she finally opened the door, it was to Basira standing a careful few steps back, leaving a clear path between Melanie and the stairs away from the Archives, if she wanted to take it.  
  
Well fuck that. She didn’t need to be managed.  
  
She dragged her head up, looking Basira in the eyes. “So. Drinks.”

* * *

Basira hadn’t wanted to go at first, had said she’d get it if Melanie didn’t want to go out anymore, after… whatever had happened. But Melanie insisted until Basira finally went along with it.  
  
Elias may have got her tears, and her begging, he might have wrenched out all her grief and guilt and told her she was right, that she’d abandoned her dad, no, she’d practically killed-  
  
No.  
  
He was _not_ getting her evening.  
  
Which is how she and Basira ended up at their usual spot a few blocks over from the Institute, where Basira had been waiting until she realized it had been too long for Melanie to have just talked to Martin, and walked over.

They’d been there for a couple of hours. If you got Basira talking about what she’d been reading, you really didn’t need to do much to keep the conversation going. It was crowded and warm, and Melanie could almost pretend it was a normal day. That she hadn’t just found out that her dad had-

She shook her head, and scowled. _Not_ thinking about it.  
  
Basira, who Melanie swore could sense when you’d started to let your guard down (was that a detective thing, or a Basira thing?), stopped in the middle of describing a book Melanie really wasn’t paying attention to, and stared at her. She looked worried. Melanie realized she’d been scratching at the backs of her hands, and locked her fingers together.  
  
“Oh, just ask,” said Melanie. “It’s not like you can make it worse.”  
  
“Yeah.” Basira smiled. It was more of a tired wince.

“So what happened back there? I mean, you weren’t answering your phone, and when I texted Martin he said you were with Elias. He wouldn’t tell me what happened, but it.” She paused. “It sounded bad.”  
  
Melanie looked down, like the conversation would somehow vanish if she never looked up again.  
  
The table swam a little, and her stomach lurched. The noise and chatter in the bar sounded more like-  
  
“You know. I.” Melanie swallowed. “Can we do this later?”

“Sure,” said Basira. “Do you want to go outside?”

* * *

“Outside” turned out to be wandering aimlessly, more to have something to do than out of any need to be somewhere. Melanie didn’t know how long they’d been walking, but moving helped. The cold helped more. Anything to remind her she wasn’t back in that stuffy office with that creepy painting and _Elias_ , Elias putting _that_ in her head and smiling as she begged him to take it back.

Begged _._ Ugh.

She sniffed, and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. She was _not_ crying, not in public, not in front of Basira, even if they were starting to be friends.  
  
Basira looked straight ahead. Neither of them had spoken in a while.  
  
Finally, Melanie broke the comfortable silence.  
  
“You know that care home fire a few years ago?”  
  
“Think so. I remember something in the news.”  
  
“My dad-” The rest of the sentence caught in her throat, and she looked down. She was sitting on a bench. So was Basira. When had that happened?

“I wish we could quit. Just… tell Elias to stay out of our heads, and walk out of there for good.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Basira, but it sounded more like she was concentrating on a puzzle than responding to what Melanie had said.  
  
They sat a few more minutes, Basira settling from concentration to unease as Melanie tried to get her voice to stop shaking.  
  
"I know how I'd quit, if I could. I'd get a sheet of paper, and write," Melanie waved her hand in front of her with a flourish. “’Dear Elias, Go fuck yourself. I quit. Best regards, Melanie.’” She grinned. “And then pin it to his chest with a knife. I bet that’d shut him up.”

“You heard what he said, though. If anyone kills him, we all die.”

“I’m still not sure I believe that. It’s a little too convenient, isn’t it? Evil head of the Institute is a literal dead man’s switch? Besides, there are plenty of places you can stab someone and not kill them.”  
  
Basira laughed. “So you’re making him angry, and giving him a knife. _That’s_ your plan.”  
  
“All right, fine, how would _you_ quit?”  
  
“I wouldn’t.”

Melanie whipped her head around. “What the _hell_ , Basira.”  
  
“Think about it. I’m not a detective anymore. I might be able to call in some favors, ask some questions, but no one has to tell me anything. Elias would still have Daisy, but she’d be alone.”

“So, what, you’re just going to… make the best of it?”

“Yeah, actually. There’s the library, I can set my own schedule, do my own research. Plenty to read. It’s not like Jon’s around, and Elias isn’t giving us anything to do. Could be worse.”

Melanie smiled. “You _would_ be swayed by the books.”

“That’s it. Come to the dark side, we have books.”

They continued on in that vein for a few minutes, and Melanie was starting to feel a little less trapped. Not hopeful, not exactly, but better. Enough to nod when Basira offered to take her home, to invite her in when they got to her door, and admit that maybe, perhaps, she didn’t want to be alone right now. Not yet, anyway. It was easier not to cry when there was someone else around to see her.

When they got inside, they sat on opposite ends of Melanie’s tiny sofa, Basira taking the corner furthest from the door. Melanie reached over and pulled the blanket from the back of the sofa around her shoulders. Her dad had bought it… somewhere, she wasn’t sure she ever knew where. It was patterned with circles and lines in a way that looked a little like a moth’s wings. She’d loved it so much that her dad had given it to her when she moved out.

They chatted about pointless things, anything to fill the air. Office gossip, which Melanie teased Basira for keeping up with (“ _mind of an investigator_ , Melanie, I’m telling you!”). Whether the cafe down the street from the Institute would ever have decent sandwiches. What they’d both been reading lately.

Finally, during a lull in the conversation, Basira looked over at her. The game was up.

“Are you ready to talk about it?”

“No. Not really. But I think. I think you need to know. What happened, I mean.”

“All right. But only if you’re sure.”

Melanie nodded, and tried to look at Basira, but ended up tracing the pattern on the blanket with her fingers.

“So. So I went to ask Martin if he was in for drinks, and he said Elias wanted to see me. I went to his office, and he said,” Melanie snorted. “He said it was my first performance review, if you can believe that.”

“Okay, that’s weird.”

“Very. It was the usual at first, him being so _smug_ , and then he got even creepier than usual. Trying to get into my head, make it out like he knew everything that went on when he wasn’t around.”

“Ugh.”

“He wasn’t making any sense, just saying he wished he could put the knowledge right in my head, and then-”

“Then?”

Melanie took a deep breath. No. No crying.

“He started… taking my whole life apart? It was like Hannibal Lecter. Things I don’t talk about, things there’s no way he should know. He knew _everything_ , Basira.”

Melanie wrapped the blanket more tightly around her shoulders. This was it.

“He- he showed me how my dad died. How he really died.”

“What.”

“I just… knew. They said he died of smoke inhalation, that there was a fire? But it wasn’t.” Her voice shook. “It wasn’t a fire. He was dead before that happened.”

Melanie looked at her knees, and picked at a loose thread on the blanket.

Basira nodded, as if confirming something to herself, and let out a slow breath. “So when you said he was getting into our heads...”

Melanie shuddered. “Literally. Yeah.”

"I'm sorry."

For a moment, it looked like Basira wanted to hug her, then thought better of it, and shifted closer to her on the sofa instead. Melanie clutched at the blanket, and relaxed a little, leaning into Basira’s side.

Finally, Basira broke the silence.  
  
“I can tell the others, if you want. I don’t want to make you do anything, but... they should- I think they should know what Elias could do to them.”

Melanie gnawed on her lip.  
  
“No details, or anything? They don’t. Need to know about my dad.”

“No, I think finding out our evil boss is psychic and can actually _beam knowledge into your head_ is plenty.”

Melanie snorted. “Thanks. No, really. Thanks.”

They sat for a few more minutes. Melanie scrolled through Twitter, her grip on her phone loosening as she started to doze off. Basira texted someone Melanie assumed was Daisy by the look on her face. Finally, after a last text, she shifted to look at Melanie. “It’s getting late. Will you be okay from here?”

Melanie nodded. “I think so, yeah.”

“Okay.” Basira stood up, and went for her jacket. Melanie followed her to the door.

“Text me if you’re not okay. I mean it.”

“All right,” said Melanie, who was too tired to pretend she meant it. “Text me when you get home?”

Basira smiled, and said she would.

Melanie shut the door behind her, and leaned her forehead on it, her dad’s blanket still wrapped around her shoulders.

She didn’t stop crying for a long time.


End file.
